Scawfell Island (South Cumberland Islands National Park)

[Kyle]As a strong cold front went through Pearl Bay, our feet-up days became increasingly choppier until we were getting around the boat by lunging from handhold to handhold. Time to go.

Our initial plan had been to make our next stop at one of the outer reefs further up the coast, but the only one that had seemed suitable was likely to be taking a real pounding by the weather, so we decided to skip it and continue to Scawfell Island, even further along.

As expected, it was a pretty rough sail. We had only the reefed main up, but were still surfing fast down the building waves. Occasionally, one of those waves would smack us just so and the person sitting at the helm would get a quick splash. At least the water is getting a little warmer. That takes the initial shock off of the dousing, but then the wind takes the remaining heat away and it's just cold. By the time Scawfell Island started looming ahead as a darker lump in the dark, moonless night, We were looking forward to getting a break.

Scawfell is a U-shaped island. The anchorage is on the leeward side, surrounded by a semi-circle of 300-meter high hills. The hills block the wind half of the time. The other half, it comes barreling down the slopes as a katabatic wind known locally as “bullets”. Our main hope was that the bay was concave enough to prevent any outside swell from successfully bending its way into the anchorage.

At daybreak, we approached the island and rounded the corner. I was half expecting the island to be super-busy like Keppel, but instead, we were the only one there. We picked up the public mooring closest to the beach. The swell wasn't gone, but was reduced from the throw-us-around kind to the rock-us-to-sleep kind. Nice!

After a brief nap to make up for the long night sail, we boarded the dinghy and headed to the beach. There was a sign there announcing the island as a National Park as well as a covered picnic area and pit latrines for the adjacent tent sites. We poked around for a bit, certain that we would find some kind of trail either zigzagging its way up the mountain or traversing to one of the adjacent beaches. We searched for quite a while until we determined that none existed. That meant the only thing the island had to offer in the way of diversions was a walk on the long, empty beach.

That was nice enough. There was plenty of interesting geology to enjoy and as the tide receded, the beach widened to include plenty of tide pools to explore. All the while, we had a soundtrack provided by the resident mockingbirds. Their favorite call sounded like they were saying “Wheee!” They must really like it when the wind swings them back and forth on their branches.

Exploring along the beach and shoreline

We had planned a couple more days at Scawfell, but after our one-afternoon beach excursion, we decided we could keep moving. Then we checked the weather. We were still trying to get out to the big reef that runs all of the way up and down the coast, but we weren't having much luck. More wind and lots of rain was in the forecast. We decided we would be best off waiting it out at Scawfell after all.

For the next two and a half days, it rained in sheets. We caught enough to refill all of our tanks. The wind was strong enough to keep our batteries full all day and night, which was good because our solar panels were barely able to eke any power out of the looming gray. We couldn't get a cell phone signal and even our sat phone was intermittent because of all of the rock around us. That made us feel less productive and more isolated than usual. By the end, we were feeling cooped up and ready to go.